TextIt makes the point that WhatsApp high valuation ($16 Billion Dollars) is because it was built to be run on features phones.

See, WhatsApp wasn’t born in Silicon Valley on an iPhone, rather it fought its way to a $16B exit by providing an awesome messaging experience to the middle billion, those living on $10 a day. And you know what, on $10 a day you probably don’t have an iPhone or an Android handset. Rather you are probably carrying around a “feature phone”, one of a thousands variations of handsets build by Nokia or Samsung running a version of Java 2 Mobile Edition. (J2ME)